This past spring, OPERA America went onsite in San Francisco to host a conversation with the leaders of five Bay Area opera companies about rebuilding audiences in the years since the pandemic. From digital and immersive productions to community events and research, these companies are focused on the long game.

Dan Cooperman, Chief Advancement Officer, OPERA America: San Francisco imposed some of the strictest restrictions on in-person activity during the pandemic. Lamplighters Music Theatre was quick to jump to digital content. Cheryl, what did you learn from that work that informs the company’s priorities now?

Cheryl Blalock, Former Executive Director*, Lamplighters Music Theatre: The first thing we did was go digital, immediately. I asked our team, what if we’re shut down for 12 or 18 months? So we planned out a monthly subscription series using our archival recordings. We started using our facility as a green screen studio and renting it out to partners like Pocket Opera and Ars Minerva. Later, we began live streaming productions. And we’re still doing it. Not all audiences are coming back. And many of them want to stay online. Our commitment is to continue to do that.

Héctor Armienta, Artistic Director and Founder, Ópera Cultura: At Ópera Cultura, we also got into digital work. We were witnessing what was happening to the farm workers during the pandemic; no one was really taking care of them. So, between 2020 and 2021, we developed an animated opera called Mi Camino that I wrote. What we’ve learned is that there are opportunities to develop audiences online. It’s critical to develop digital content, but more so to find the threads between what you produce online and what you present live. Because that’s what we’re all about: live performances.

Dan Cooperman: Both San Francisco Opera and Opera Parallèle were innovative in the digital sphere. And when you were able to reopen, you both integrated immersive productions and experiences into your seasons. What was your inspiration for that?

Matthew Shilvock, General Director, San Francisco Opera: In terms of broad learnings from the pandemic, a big one was around the power of innovation, of trying new things. Originally, there was no chance to produce the normal way. Building the set of skills as a company for how we innovate is something that we’ve really ported over into this post-pandemic time. And I think being much more intentional about how you connect with audiences — that also came from that period, as well. You cannot take someone’s attendance for granted in any way. You have to keep earning that attendance.

Nicole Paiement, General and Artistic Director, Opera Parallèle: We spent a lot of time at Opera Parallèle thinking about our mission: What can we do right now that will help us continue on our path? We decided to go back to an idea that we had many years ago of developing a graphic-novel-style opera, but now in a digital format. Once COVID opened the door to live performance, we continued to experiment with the idea of bringing a more complete experience to our audiences. We felt our audiences wanted an intimate setting, wanted to be engaged in a very different way now that community mattered. Contemporary opera very often is dark; we wanted to give them joy and magic.

Dan Cooperman: Shawna, you came to Opera San José in the middle of the pandemic. Your predecessor had built a remarkable digital media studio, and you inherited the task of transitioning the company back to the theater. What has been your approach to audience building?

Shawna Lucey, General Director and CEO, Opera San José: Our digital arm and digital offerings continue to be a source of pride and engagement for a lot of our patrons. But we are focused on offering ways for our specific audiences to be at home in the California Theatre where we perform. During a board retreat, we agreed that one of our hallmarks is being friendly and welcoming. So, we doubled down on that. When people come into the California Theatre, they immediately feel the warmth of the atmosphere, the deliciousness of the cookies — and our community can see themselves on stage.

Dan Cooperman: What does that look like?

Shawna Lucey: We partner with a lot of San Jose organizations like Mosaic America, which is an amalgamation of different arts organizations, for dancers and children’s choruses in our productions. We’re digging into what we’re programming and asking ourselves: Is what we’re putting on stage reflective of the people of the South Bay? Can they see themselves on stage and in the audience? We’re about to open a new production of Florencia en el Amazonas, our first Spanish-language opera. This evening is South First Fridays, an art walk event in downtown San Jose with a lot of arts organizations, where we’ve started presenting an immersive kind of event. This evening we’re going to have not just arias from Florencia, but we’re going to have folkloric dancing, a mariachi band, face painting, and butterfly making to create an installation that will be presented throughout the run of Florencia, and we’ll also give out free empanadas from a local business. We’re trying to really model how opera can be an art form that everyone can live in. They can feel that Opera San José belongs to them.

Dan Cooperman: Héctor, how have partnerships and community engagement helped Ópera Cultura?

Héctor Armienta: One of the fundamental anchors of Ópera Cultura is that we are an opera company and we are also in social service. We’ve always had collaborative partners. Thinking about the future, we’re trying to extend that with relationships with organizations like SOMOS Mayfair and the San Jose Historical Society. We’re looking to find ways to be more authentic and collaborative in our relationships. There’s a composer who we are commissioning to develop a work that will be in the community, and we’re also expanding our work in arts education. Since we’re the only Latinx opera company in the country, we feel that it’s important we continue to do this kind of work.

Dan Cooperman: Nicole, you think of your community engagement initiatives as your “bullhorn” — a way to engage the community in conversations around the stories you tell on stage. Why is that important to you?

Nicole Paiement: The name Opera Parallèle comes from the idea of working in parallel with the community. As an organization, it’s very important to have an audience for our performances, but there are different entry points. We invite people to come to conversations. You don’t have to buy tickets. These events are free. It’s a way for us to authentically be part of the community. I want people to say, “I don’t like opera, but I went to this event, and now I’m going to go to the opera. I’m curious about this.” I know that it’s very demanding for all companies to invest in those kinds of extracurricular activities when you’re trying to produce operas. But in the long run, it’s really creating what art is supposed to do: It’s creating engagement.

Dan Cooperman: Matthew, your company has invested substantially in audience research. Can you share some of what you’ve learned?

Matthew Shilvock: We are all seeing this great influx of new audience members, but that means there’s new things to learn about who these people are. We’re trying to make decisions as much around data as we can. We offer $10 Dolby Family Tickets, at least a hundred every night. If you are from the Bay Area and have not been to the opera in the last three years, then you can get one pair of tickets. It’s a one-time introductory offer, and they’ve been flying off the shelf. Once you’ve had the Dolby ticket, we can curate your subsequent journey. We don’t just throw you in the deep end with a regular ticket. We give you another offer, and we’ve done some A/B testing on which of those works best. We sold 9,000 Dolby tickets last year, and 22% of those people have already bought another ticket — which is a much higher retention rate than your average first-time single-ticket audience. It’s the power of data to really inflect decisions.

Dan Cooperman: Your marketing director shared with me that when Dolby ticket buyers come back, no matter what opera they came to the first time, they predominantly return for productions of inherited repertoire. How does that affect how you think about programming?

Matthew Shilvock: Certainly we have seen new pieces like El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego and Omar having extraordinary sold-out successes. If you can find pieces where there’s a sense of community trust for the work you’re putting on stage, your audience interest can go through the roof. We’ve also seen the same thing for some of the great standards, like the Traviata that Shawna directed for us. I think there is a great hunger for a broad spectrum of repertoire at the moment. The great beauty of the opera stage is it can tell stories that are extraordinarily relevant in the here and now.

Shawna Lucey: I think we are obviously at a very critical inflection point for all performing arts in the United States, and opera is a great leader. We are making the world anew in this moment — in thinking about creating new audiences and why people come to experience the power of music in person, and also in the digital sphere. I’m extremely optimistic for a lot of reasons. I keep thinking about ways in which we can get to know new people and make them part of our family, because it really is that experience of coming together. Even if you don’t know the person sitting next to you at the opera, it is a communal and important and deeply human experience. In terms of the practical work of audience building, thank goodness we have OPERA America and the research that Matthew and others are offering to help guide the way. Ultimately, we are the solution or the human experience.

Adapted from an OPERA America event on April 5, 2024.

*Cheryl Blalock served as executive director of Lamplighters Music Theatre at the time of the conversation in April 2024. She stepped down from her position in August.

This article was published in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of Across the Board, a publication of OPERA America for opera company trustees.